Thread: Dacha gardens - Russia's hidden food power

The Cristian Science Monitor
Russia's dacha gardens feed body and soul
http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0625/p11s01-woeu.html

Russians have been feeding themselves in this way for a thousand years and, despite the mass urbanization and industrialization of the past century, it's astounding how many still migrate out to their country retreats each summer, lugging shovels, hoes, and other gardening tools (along with kids and babushkas) in their overloaded cars. According to a 2008 survey by the independent Public Opinion Fund in Moscow, a stunning 56 percent of urban Russians possess a dacha or rural "kitchen garden," and one-quarter of all Russian families still rely on home-grown fruits and vegetables for part of what they eat.

The idea of a dacha – a country cottage – is familiar to any reader of Anton Chekhov's stories about 19th-century life in Russia. But it only became a mass phenomenon in the 1970s, when the Soviet authorities began distributing small parcels of land around big cities (typically 600 square meters, or about one-seventh of an acre) as an inducement to urban workers to grow for themselves some of the foodstuffs that the official economy was poor at providing, such as vegetables, herbs, fruits, and berries.

"The Soviet leadership had the brilliant idea of handing out plots of land to keep people occupied with feeding themselves," says Mr. Tumanov. "Since then, we've gone through a series of crises in Russia so terrible that, if they'd happened in any Western country, they would have triggered revolution. But not in Russia, because people had their little pieces of land, where they could grow food and keep to themselves. And that system still works."

Originally Posted by Hanna

They are very small plots of land. I think dachas have more land... (??) And I think there is proper little cottage at the dacha, where you could stay the night, right?

A little bit more, but that's the only real difference. Most land plots held by city dwellers were 20x30 meters or even 20x20, like our family had in Kazakhstan.

Originally Posted by Hanna

And I think there is proper little cottage at the dacha, where you could stay the night, right?

You are confusing two different types of dacha. In late 19th and early 20th century, the word meant a summer house where you could go out at summer with your family and live there. No one did any gardening there (except for planting some flowers, perhaps). After the Bolshevist revolution, the only people who still had "real" dachas (that is, ones with really habitable cottage used mainly for rest and recreation) were government officials, actors, writers, leading scientists, etc. The defining part of this first type of "dacha" is a real cottage. Later, more people were allowed to have a true dacha, but their number was still limited.

Then the government started giving out small land gardening plots to city inhabitants. The size varied depending on land availability, but they rarely exceeded 800 square meters, the most common size being 600 sq.m. When we lived in Kazakhstan, our family had a 20x20 plot, i.e. 400 square meters ("четыре сотки" in Russian).

Originally, most people never built anything on their plot, except for a small tool shed and an outhouse . Some gardening societies had big common tool sheds where each family had a little closet-like section. And these land plots that were originally intended for gardening were not even called dachas at first, just "огород". Later on, some people started calling them dachas (people love using big words to refer to small things — it is like calling salesman a sales manager or calling a janitor a maintenance engineer ), this use of the word took on, and by 1980, if someone in Moscow told you they had a dacha, you had no idea if the person was speaking about a cottage in a fashionable place with all utilities, phone, and stuff, or if he mean just a plot of land with a little dingy shack on it (or probably even without one).

Now, the defining element of that second type of dachas is that they were used for gardening. Some of them had tiny houses (and their number increased as time went on), but the majority of those were not fit to live in, no matter how pretty or quaint they looked from outside . You could spend there a night or two. Stay for a weekend, perhaps, if you enjoy roughing it.

Of course, later the clear distinction between the two types was lost. But in the Soviet Union, it was quite clear in most cases.

Now, the British allotments we are speaking about are very similar to that second type.

Originally Posted by Hanna

People grow vegetables on them.

Check!

Originally Posted by Hanna

They were more popular in the past when people had more time and less money and really benefited from growing their own vegetables.

Check! (I must add that today more and more people in Moscow buy "true" dachas with bigger land plots and proper houses).

Originally Posted by Hanna

It was mainly used by working class people in larger cities.

Check! (Well, almost. Since teachers and engineers weren't paid much more than simple blue collar workers, and often even less, they were just as happy to get a piece of land where they could do some part-time farming).

Originally Posted by Hanna

hey spend the day at the allotment and then go home to their flat and sleep there.

Check! (Well, as I mentioned above, sometimes you could stay there for a night during a weekend to spare yourself a trip to the town and back).